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Sunday, May 25, 2014

I've been travelling a lot of late, which I'll blog about on its own in a bit (including a 'best of the best' coffee machines post), but I heard a story from a friend, which triggered a memory which I want to share. It took a moment, but I realised that a whole chain of events that I was unaware of, yet intimately involved in) added up to a success story for Warburg's Lens, the theoretical oncology preprint discussion forum that some colleagues and I started to try to speed up the process of scientific discussion.

Fast forward a bit, and I'm minding my own business trying to get a job, and I get a request from a journal to review an article.... lo and behold it is the same one we are talking about. For various reasons, I declined to review it, but I remembered that there were some very constructive criticisms from people on Warburg's Lens (people who have published significant works in this direct area), so I knew who I could suggest as a replacement reviewer, which I did. Readers won't have a problem guessing who any of the anonymous people are, but I will not divulge that here.

Fast forward again, and I'm visiting some colleagues in Boston (again, post to follow, there was wide #heterogeneity in coffee machines) and a friend mentioned that this great paper that he had reviewed just came out... and on the same day, my colleague and supervisor, +Alex Fletcher sent me an email notifying me of the paper, which is now out, and you can find it online here, but of course, I can't get it at home without dropping $40. I am eager to read the paper and compare it to the #preprint.

Either way, congrats to +Arne Traulsen et al. on the nice paper and thanks to all who contribute to the discussion on Warburg's Lens - and it's inspiration website, Haldane's Sieve. Keep submitting your #preprints to repositories like the arXiv and +bioRxiv Preprints, keep doing good #openscience. This seems like a win for everyone.

I approach the understanding of cancer like my original training in physics taught me - from the ground up, using the descriptive language of mathematics. Using established mathematics in new ways, guided by the principles of evolution, I hope to better understand (and maybe treat!) cancer. I am a proud member of the Integrated Mathematical Oncology group at the Moffitt Cancer Center and the Centre for Mathematical Biology at Oxford University.